More money in your unemployment check?

More than 300,000 Californians receiving unemployment checks on a federal extension should see a boost in their weekly payments by the end of the year. But come Dec. 31, the extension payments are scheduled to go away entirely.

Currently, unemployed persons across the country can receive up to 63 weeks of unemployment insurance through a series of three tiers federal extensions. That’s beyond the standard 26 weeks through the state of California.

The base checks range from $40 to $450 per week. But in April, federal extension payments, those beyond 26 weeks, took a 17.69 percent hit due to sequestration, the $1.2 trillion of across-the-board federal budget cuts over 10 years that began after President Obama and Congress failed to agree on terms to avoid them. That moved the extension checks to range from $33 to $371 per week.

But on Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year, the federal checks will go back up to $40 to $450 for new extension filings or those moving to a new tier. Persons in the midst of an extension tier will not see their pay go up until they file for the next tier.

The boost is independent of whether the government shuts down this week.

“The restoration of federal unemployment benefits back to pre-sequestration amounts will be a welcome relief to our customers,” said a statement from EDD Chief Deputy Director Sharon Hilliard. “Every dollar counts for those who have lost their jobs and rely on federal unemployment benefits for their living expenses.”

The bump appears to be short-lived, as all extensions are set to expire at the end of 2013. That means that even if someone qualifies for 63 weeks of unemployment, the checks will stop unless Congress and President Obama agree to extend them another year. It wouldn’t be unprecedented for that to happen.

In 2008, Congress and President George W. Bush enacted the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, calling for the extensions. President Obama and Congress agreed to extend the extensions for 2013 as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations in December.

At one point, a person could receive up to 99 weeks of federal extensions, but the state stopped qualifying for the last two as the unemployment rate continued to drop. California’s unemployment rate has fallen from 12.4 percent in Oct. 2010 to 8.6 percent in August.

Alan Gin, economist at the University of San Diego, said losing the checks entirely could sting the local economy in a tough job market.

“You’re taking money out of the hands of people who would then be spending it,” he said. “We’re recovering but it’s still relatively weak. We still have a pretty high unemployment rate in the state of California even though it is going down.”